Introduction
Love as incoming threat
Most songs about falling in love are written from the other side of it. Julia Jacklin writes from the edge, the exact moment before you go over. There's no romance in her framing, just a clear-eyed recognition that something is about to happen to her and she can't stop it.
The title alone is doing something strange. "Get away from me" is a warning, maybe even a plea. "I think I'll love you soon" is an admission. Together they create a paradox that the whole song lives inside: wanting distance as a defense against the feeling that's already too close to escape.
Verse 1
Stripping away the pressure
The song opens by dismantling every unspoken rule people place on new relationships. No need to be careful, no need to be sure, no need to call. On the surface it reads like radical casualness, almost like Jacklin is playing it cool. But read it again and you realize she's not freeing the other person. She's freeing herself.
"I'm just trying to ready myself / For what's coming my way"
That line cracks the whole thing open. She already knows where this is going. The permissions she's handing out aren't detachment. They're preparation rituals. She's lowering the stakes externally so she can manage what's building internally.
Chorus
The contradiction held together
The chorus is six words of pure contradiction, repeated like a confession she keeps having to make.
"Get away from me, I think I'll love you soon"
There's no resolution here, and Jacklin doesn't reach for one. The push and the pull exist in the same breath. Asking someone to leave because staying means something she's not ready for yet. It's one of those rare lyrical moments where the tension is the point, and naming the tension is the only honest response available.
Verse 2
Fairness goes out the window
The second verse tightens the screws. Now she's not just releasing the other person from obligation, she's releasing herself from it too. You don't have to be gentle. I don't have to be fair.
"You don't have to call me up, darlin' / And tell me that you care"
This is where the song gets a little darker. She's not building something safe and mutual here. She's acknowledging that what's coming might be messy and uneven, and she'd rather face that honestly than dress it up in reassurances neither of them can back up yet.
Bridge
Love shrinks to survival
The bridge revisits lines from Verse 1 but shifts the destination. Earlier she was readying herself for what was coming her way. Here the goal has quietly contracted.
"I'm just tryin' to ready myself / To get through the day"
Love doesn't even factor into the immediate horizon anymore. Just getting through the day. That's not pessimism, it's the honest cost of being this self-aware about your own feelings. When you can see the wave coming, you spend a lot of energy just staying on your feet before it hits.
Outro
The want she can't argue away
The outro is where everything unravels just enough to show the seams. The composed narrator from the opening verses admits what she's actually been fighting the whole time.
"I'm tryin' to not want you to stay"
Trying to. Not succeeding. The chorus fragments around her, "get away" echoing under "I think I'll love you soon," both voices running simultaneously like she's arguing with herself out loud. By the end she's not asking anyone to leave. She's just watching the feeling arrive anyway.
Conclusion
What Jacklin captures here isn't the joy of falling in love or the wreckage of heartbreak. It's the uncanny experience of watching yourself fall in real time, conscious enough to name it, powerless enough that naming it changes nothing. The song ends without resolution because that's exactly where she is: not in love yet, but close enough that getting away is no longer really an option. The warning in the title was always meant for herself.
